tBlog - Welcome to My Asylum

Despite the dreaded showroom depreciation, whereupon my new vehicle will drop a couple of thousand dollars in value the very minute I drive it off the lot, I opted for the new car route for personal reasons.

In general, I find it more comfortable to deal with the fresh, young, and inexperienced sales people because I feel they are almost as clueless as I am, have not yet developed the kind of avarice and jaded-ness, which characterize many of their older and more experienced colleagues. There is little comfort when I am hounded by a high powered, overly enthusiastic salesperson, within seconds of disembarking from my own vehicle, who obviously sees me with dollar signs in his eyes, and bombards me with all the loaded closing questions known to man. I had to take a basic course in salesmanship just to adequately defend myself. Young sales people, on the other hand, are still learning on the job, and I am delighted to learn along with them. The salesman from whom I eventually concluded my buying decision was such a newbie, and I thought he did a remarkable job in handling himself by being properly helpful, without being overwhelmingly persuasive.

Back at the dealership, after the negotiated price of "my" vehicle was agreed upon, the thing that stuck to my crop was my encounter with the finance manager. There he was, sitting in his glass office, with his white starched shirt, his tan creased pants, his power tie, his gold watch, and his gold cuff-links, bespeaking some level of authority. But a thief, with larceny in his heart, is a thief by any other name. First, the original advertised new car financing rate of 3.9% APR, which had partly prompted my return to this particular dealership was applicable to every other model except mine. Did I sense a variation of bait and switch? Then when I was practically assured that I should be reasonably certain to qualify for their new car rate of 4.9% APR, what I was presented with when I sat down was a totally different story. I know my FICO (or Beacon) Score, and I was already approved at 4.9% APR at another dealership belonging to the same family down the road.

First he tried to sell me all the extended warranties up the ying-yang, pointing out only the very slight differences in the monthly payments, never bothering to point out or mention the interest rate, and when I respectfully declined, that?s when I saw the 7.65% APR jumping up at me. What's this, I asked?? Oh, your credit report had a couple of glitches, (where they had remained through thick and thin), and that was the best he (not "they") could offer me. I countered that 7.65% APR was nowhere near competitive, and surely I had been misrepresented in the early part of the negotiation process, and that it looked like I was not buying a car after all. As I was getting ready to get up from my chair, lo and below, as if by magic, he produced a fresh cost estimate sheet, and said he knew a bank that he might be able to get me at say, 6%. Again, I declined, and he quickly revised the figures to indicate 5.65%. Now all these gyrations took place in less than a couple of minutes. Our finance manager knew that if I could fog up a mirror, he could get me 5.65% or better, but he decided to try to rape me right at the start, because apparently he also thought I just fell off the turnip truck on the way to his office.

A few seconds was all it took for me to nail it down. I had invested enough time farting around and I was primed to complete the purchase. And the "funny money" close (almost as notorious as the Good Cop, Bad Cop thing) was used on me: was I going to allow the difference between a dollar or two a day stand in the way of my owning a new car, he asked? To labor the obvious, a dollar or two each day over the duration of the financing period of five years come to an additional $1800 or $3600. So, he was in essence challenging me without declaration whether I had enough brains to do the math on the spot!

Even though I was not happy with the way this schmuck tried to take advantage of me, or people like me, and even though I sensed there was a teachable moment, I concluded that this gentleman was my contemporary and he should know better. I could have expressed my dismay all the way up the food chain, and received some satisfaction as to how I felt. But why bother? Why should I interfere with his karma, and hinder his own eventual downfall to that abyss of his own making one of these days? His comeupperance will be waiting for him soon enough.

Oh.... in case you are still holding your breath, I did drive out of the dealership in a 2005 Honda CR-V with 8 miles on the odometer. It looks just like the picture your will find in the issue of Consumer Reports on new 2005 cars. & nbsp; &n bsp;